User:JohnB/Fanfiction/Mordecai and Little Loony

by JohnB

(This story was formerly known as "Slick-Fingers and Little Loony". It ws inspired by a Japanese "manga" about two people who happen to witness a “road devil”, a swordsman who practices his skill on unsuspecting passers-by on dark streets. Of course, nobody carries swords anymore, but what Japan lacks in random shootings, it sort of makes up for with random slashings and stabbings on lonely roads at night.)

A Chance Encounter:

Mordecai was padding his Argonian gate along the path leading from Seyda Neen to the sea in the direction of Hla Oad. He touched the bulge inside his shirt, felt the weight of the bag of gold, and sighed with satisfaction. Even after paying Arille his percentage, he still did very well, but he couldn’t overstay his welcome. Everybody knows the games, three-card Monte and ball-and-cups, are impossible to win in the hands of a cold-blooded expert, but they get sucked into it all the same. The trick is to let them win enough to think they’re doing well, but when they’re near cleaned out in the long run, tell them you’ll be back in a week or so—give them time to beg, borrow, or steal enough gold for the next game. And they keep coming back, like cattle to a vampire. But the bottom line is to win big without the guards intervening.

(Note: To see what a three-card Monte game looks like, watch George C. Scott in “The Flim-Flam Man” [1967].)

The path led through a woodsy area. It was getting dark, not the time to be out there alone. Mordecai never carried a torch so as not to alert bandits of his whereabouts. And so it was with some trepidation that he stopped and listened to a commotion in the bushes away from the path. He reached into his shirt, drew a silver dagger, and went into Sneak mode. There was a muffled groaning and then the clinking of coins, and a man stood up from the bushes, hiked up his trousers, and sauntered on back toward Seyda Neen. Mordecai watched him puzzled.

“Hey, you!” a voice called to Mordecai.

He was startled to see a young Breton woman suddenly appear standing among the same bushes, slipping her arms into a cheap robe and tying it at the waist.

“What are you doing, spying on me?” she demanded as she rolled up a floor rug and tucked it under her arm.

She approached to get a better look at him. He could tell from her appearance and manner that she was what they call a “night hawk”, a night worker without any fixed place of employment.

“Lady, I’m a cold-blooded lizard. What humans do at night is none of my business.”

“Oh?” she smiled facetiously. “So what does your reptilian imagination say he and I were doing back there?”

Mordecai considered for a moment.

“Uhm, gathering cromberries?”

The Crime and Reporting it:

Just then there was a cry up the path, and they could see a second man draw a katana and cut the first man down with two strokes. The woman was about to scream, so Mordecai put a scaly hand over her mouth and pulled her into the bushes to get her out of sight. The second man sheathed his katana and continued down the path passing them along the way. It was too dark to see his facial features, but they got a general idea of his height and body shape.

“Holy Azura in heaven!” the woman said with a quavering voice. “Why did he do that?!”

“He was testing a sword. The value of a newly-forged sword doubles if it has killed a man, and doubles again when enchanted with a Daedra’s soul.”

“Rumor has it that a tax collector was killed in this vicinity, and the murderer is still at large. This could be him.”

She suggested they report it to the guards, but Mordecai demurred. He’d been able to steer clear of the thugs-in-armor for so long that he couldn’t remember how much bounty was on his head, and he didn’t want to lose tonight’s earnings. He offered to accompany her back to Seyda Neen and let her do the talking.

Mordecai watched from around a corner as she spoke with a guard. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but it seemed to be turning into a bit of a shouting match. The guard shoved her then put his hand on the hilt of his Imperial broadsword as a warning. She obediently backed off then gave him an obscene gesture and bolted away.

“What happened?” Mordecai asked when she returned to him.

“Big brute! He told me not to waste their time. It would be better if these ex-convicts were all strung up on a gibbet and not terrorize the highways and byways of Vvardenfell. He also said the killer of the tax collector is the excise office’s problem, not theirs.”

“How did he know the murdered man was an ex-convict?”

“Well, they all are. A repeat offender must have gone back to the Imperial prison and spread the word to look up ‘Little Loony’ in Seyda Neen. Now there’s no lack of customers coming my way.”

“Loony?” Mordecai asked doubtfully.

“Oh, I’m not at all like that,” she laughed. “That’s how people translate my name, Lunette. Look, it’s getting late and I really could use a drink. I’ve got a few jugs of flin at my place. Let’s go there and forget about all this.”

Lunette's Hut:

A young dog was barking as they approached her hut out on the cape near the Thelas ancestral tomb.

“Foundling, it’s me,” she called out. "I call him that," she explained, "because he was an abandoned puppy when I found him."

The dog stopped barking, but he continued growling at the sight of Mordecai.

“Foundling, stop! If you can’t be friendly to my guest, you stay outside.”

It was no use, so Lunette took the dog out in back and leashed him to the dog house.

“Sorry about that. He’s never seen an Argonian before.”

Mordecai nodded in understanding, and they entered the hut together.

It was surprisingly clean and well kept, and one wall had a green-glass window looking out towards the sea. Mordecai was astonished because huts normally have no windows at all. Lunette explained that she had saved up enough gold to buy the panes of glass and had a carpenter set them in a window that could slide open and let in the sea breeze.

“I am greatly impressed!” Mordecai exclaimed.

“Thank you. I can’t imagine living in an airless box the way most people do here. Have a seat. Can I offer you anything?”

“Have you got any marinated crickets? They’re delicious.”

“N-no.”

“They’re not my favorite, but a dish of sauteed cockroaches would do.”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked, her face screwing up.

“Alright, yams.”

“Ah, now you’re talking. I’ve got plenty of those. Hold on a sec while I fix them up for you.”

She knew the Akaviri way of cooking yams, which is by burying them in burning-hot river-gravel.

Getting Better Acquainted:

She bustled about in the kitchen while Mordecai engaged her in conversation. He said he couldn’t understand why she plied her trade under the stars when she could do it in the privacy of this perfectly good home. She answered that he didn’t understand the nature of her clientele.

“They’re shiftless freeloaders, all of them,” she explained. “They have nowhere to go and never learned a trade, so any one of them could take up residence here, imagine himself my lord-and-master, and start knocking me around demanding more money. I know because it already happened once, but he was a drifter at heart and finally hit the road. I swore I’d never let that happen again.

“Sometimes I don’t realize until too late what scoundrels they are. If I get a hatchet murderer or a parricide, he can say I gave no satisfaction and leave me empty-handed, and there’s nothing I can do about it. You see, I come from the continent, so to everybody here I am ‘Outlander’ and can expect very little sympathy from them—‘You don’t like it here, go back to where you came from!’” She uncorked a jug of flin and set two cups on the table with a dish of steaming-hot yams between them.

“Oh, I also have some meat, if you’d like.”

“Sorry, vegetarian.”

She sat down across from him, and they blew on the piping-hot yams as they peeled them and gingerly took small bites to keep from scalding their tongues. A mouthful of flin could quench the heat, but Mordecai was a bit doubtful how much flin he could drink since the Argonian metabolism is so different from that of humans. But the conviviality of the occasion kept the flin flowing into both cups.

The conversation inevitably turned to Mordecai's line of work. He offered to do a demonstration without any bets placed just to show how it's done.

"It's the easiest game you've ever seen, allya gotta do is spot the queen!" he said showing an Ace of Spades, an Ace of Clubs, and a Queen of Hearts in his hand.

He placed the cards side by side on the table and began shifting them around.

"There she A, there she B, now can you tell me what you C?" he added showing each time where the queen was.

Then he made a "Voila!" gesture, and Lunette pointed at a card. It was the Ace of Clubs.

"B'vec, how did you do that?!"

"Well, if everybody knew that, I would have to find an honest line of work."

"Do it again!" she said eagerly.

She watched very carefully what he was doing, but still pointed to the Ace of Spades.

“I don't think I like this game," she said glumly.

"If we were playing for money, this would be a good time for you to drop out," Mordecai told her. "As my mentor used to say, 'You can't cheat an honest person.'"

"I have another question for you,” Lunette said with a bit of a drawl coming on. “Why don’t you use dopey lizard-talk like, ‘Be well, tra-ve-ller’ or ‘This one has questions; what does it ask’?”

Mordecai was a stung by this but realized it was only the flin talking.

“All right, I was born a slave on a plantation near Suran, so I’ve lived in Vvardenfell all my life. I didn’t want to sound like an average Argonian, so I learned how to talk the way most people do. It is the rhymed banter that distracts the gamer to make bad decisions in three-card Monte, and the MC can’t do that if he’s speaking Pidgin.

“My master would often take me along to the House of Earthly Delights and leave me in the tap-room while he went downstairs to the skooma den. There I met an old con-man named Mordecai Jones who took me on as a disciple because he had nobody else to teach his card tricks to. He taught me every sleight of hand he knew.

“One day, my master came up sooner than I expected and found me practicing. I thought, alright, let's have a high-stakes game here! He asked what I was doing, so I challenged him to a game of three-card Monte. I told him I expected no money, but if he could find the Queen of Hearts five times in seven tries, I would return with him—and then tell the Mrs. where he’s been spending all his time. If he could not, he should write a Certificate of Manumission and unlock my bracer, and the Mrs. would never know about his addiction. His brain was still drug-addled, and he lost handily. I got my certificate, and the bracer came off.

“I later heard through the grapevine that, when he was of sound mind again, he was desperately trying to track me down, so I borrowed the name Mordecai, which doesn’t sound Argonian, and made myself scarce. I actually got a message from him begging me to submit to the bracer again, but I ignored it, and the rest is history.”

It was dawn when they both turned in, she in her hammock and he on a spare bed roll.

A First Time for Everything:

It was early afternoon when Mordecai awoke. He felt groggy and wobbled on his feet, something they call "recycled-drunk". Lunette said he could lie in while she went into town to get something for dinner. He offered to accompany her, but she insisted he stay another night to recover fully from the hangover. She would take Foundling with her for protection and promised to be back well before sundown.

Mordecai enjoyed sitting at the open window as the red fireball of sun sank toward the horizon. He suddenly remembered her promise, and as the hut darkened, he became increasingly anxious. Unable to bear the suspense any longer, he found an iron torch by the entrance, lit it, and set out in search of Lunette and Foundling.

He padded along looking this way and that until his feet felt something moist. He bent down and found the trail was wet with blood. He then heard a blade unsheathe behind him. He wheeled around and saw the malefactor rushing forward to strike. As the blade came down, Mordecai struck the blade from the side with the iron torch. The blade broke with a clinging snap, and the swordsman found he was left with only the "tsuka" (hilt) to strike with. He dropped it and turned to run, but Mordecai brought the torch down on his head with such force he could feel it cave in like a watermelon.

Mordecai stood there wild-eyed and panting as he realized he had just killed a man. It was an awful feeling. Never in his entire life had he imagined himself doing such a thing.

“Wow, look what you’ve done!” a voice said.

At first, he imagined it was the voice of his conscience, but it sounded more like Lunette. He turned and saw her with a basket of groceries.

Parting Ways:

“Lunette! Thank the gods you’re alive!”

“Yes, but Foundling jumped him and got struck down. Sorry I took so long, but I had to go bury him. I hope there’s a Dog Heaven because he certainly earned it.”

“But what’s to become of me? All the guards will be out to kill me.”

“Who attacked first, you did or he did?”

“He did.”

“Then you’re cleared; don’t worry. Check his pockets.”

Mordecai got down on one knee and searched. There was a ring.

“I’ll bet anything that belonged to the tax collector," Lunette said. "I tell you what: in the morning, go search for the body, and whatever you find on it, take it to the excise office and claim your reward. We could use it to make a few home improvements to accommodate two people. The place will get pretty lonely without Foundling, so I hope you’ll stick around.”

Mordecai was silent long enough for Lunette to start feeling uncomfortable.

"Is something wrong?" she finally asked.

"We Argonians make decent slaves but poor house pets."

Lunette was stung by this, but she remembered how she'd mocked Argonian pronunciation. She also had to acknowledge that his dispassionate mind was diametrically opposed to her own, and his inability to empathize would become an annoyance in the long run. What he was saying was in no way unreasonable.

"So, what do you plan to do?"

"Here, you take the ring. I'll go search for this tax collector and bring back whatever I find. Then you go to the excise office and claim the reward for yourself."

"Why?!"

"Lunette, there may be unforeseen consequences to all this. I still have a price on my head and a former master who'd like to drag me back into slavery. I'll go to Black Marsh where I know I'll be safe among my own kind.

"As for you, you know that what you're doing isn't good, and if you go on doing it, one day somebody may find you in the bushes with your throat slit. You deserve better than that, don't you? Get out of Seyda Neen! Use this reward as start-up money for a business somewhere!"

"And you!" she responded. "What you're doing is just as bad, and one day you'll wind up in prison, or worse yet back on the plantation. Put those amazing skills of yours to better use. I'll help support you because, really, I owe you so much!"

"Lunette, everything was freely given. Please don’t try and hinder me."

She lunged forward and threw her arms around him. Her warmth felt good to his cold blood, but he didn't know what to do. He gently put his arms around her and patted her back.

"Now I'll go look for that tax collector because I want to be out of here by morning."

She nodded wiping away her tears and then waived as he padded off into the dark woods.